“Didst show thy work to anyone, Richard?” Master Condell asked.
“None, sir.” My voice broke; I steadied it. “It was locked up in the scribe's desk while I was not working on it.”
“Take comfort, boy,” John Heminges said. “No one accuses you. Suppose one of us goes to see this Fawnia and Dorastus and uncovers the truth below the hearsay?”
The Company agreed to this sensible proposal, then pondered whom to send. “The obvious choice,” remarked Master Will, “is Richard. He knows the play.”
Before I quite realized what had happened, my duties for two days hence were assigned to Gregory, the new apprentice. Robin wished to go with me and spoke so roundly for himself that our master allowed him, as he was marked for only a trifling part on the day in question. No sooner had she heard of our design than Starling insisted she must accompany us, and found a girl to substitute for her at the Theater. The more the merrier, apparently.
Our master gave us each two pence to admit us to the Rose. Robin, still flush with silver he had earned on tour, insisted that we be rowed across the Thames in fine style, laying out another two pence for the purpose. The September day gleamed like gold, beguiling me to lay aside my worries, and Starling reveled in the glory of being squired to the theater by two such gallants as we. She had put aside her cap and twined flowers in her wayward hair as though it were May Day, and smiled prettily at Robin as he handed her into the boat. I was the drab in this party, recognizing too late that if I wished to go unnoticed it was unwise to travel with either of them in a festival mood.
Robin, who could talk a snake out of its skin, persuaded our waterman to take a seat on the stern and let us boys do the rowing. Halfway across, when the fellow was gazing placidly behind him and no doubt thinking he had got the better of these young pillow-heads, Rob seized the moment and, with jab of his oar, tipped him into the Thames. Even before the splash had fully sounded with me, Robin suggested that we bend to our oars with a right good will, putting yards between us and the roaring waterman. Already an empty wherry was spinning to his aid. Its grinning pilot tipped a nod to us, and Starling squealed with laughter, stamping her feet on the floor of the boat. Never was I more glad to reach another shore than when we ran the boat up the landing stairs and tied it securely. “Now for the Rose,” Robin said with a glance over his shoulder. “And let us blend artfully with the crowd.”
We passed the Bear Garden—which is misnamed to my mind, being as stinking, noisy, and ungarden-like a place as any in London. Rob knew it better than he should and entertained us with a bloody tale of the last match between Old Tim and Ball of Fire, until even Starling begged him to stop. By then we had reached our goal.
The Rose is newer than our Theater, and looks it: a many-sided building similar in design but sparkling with fresh paint and a permanent stage. The boards of the Rose were smooth-planed and well-fitting, with none of the humps that the Lord Chamberlain's Men had to guard against tripping over. Each door and shutter bore a handsome florid rose carved into the wood, and the floor was covered in dry rushes that breathed a light golden dust under the scuffing feet of the groundlings. Many of these—apprentices, laborers, and serving maids—were avid theatergoers who had doubtless seen Robin on the boards any number of times, but appeared not to recognize him. This was probably because he blended so well with them, as loud and unruly as any. Starling suffered a pinch or two, for females were fair game out of the galleries; she made me put my arm around her shoulders to pose as her protection. She enjoyed this more than I thought seemly, but there were only twenty minutes to wile away thus until the trumpet sounded its third call and a Prologue stepped out to set before the audience the gist of the play.
How odd to think that, although I had now performed in more than forty plays, this was only the second I had seen in London. My ability to judge it as a spectator was compromised, for by now I knew too well the workings of a play, and could not enter easily into the spirit of it. Just as well, for my purpose was not to be swept away but to compare this work to The Winter's Tale. The names were all changed—Fawnia for Perdita, Dorastus for Florizel, Podosto for Leontes, and so on—and though similar in its unfolding, the story ended very differently: the ruined queen died indeed and the king, overcome by his many sins (not least of which is falling in love with his own daughter) kills himself. The words seemed inferior to Shakespeare's overall, in ways I could not have explained, and I caught no outright borrowings.
Edward Alleyn, one of London's great players, carried the role of King Podosto with such authority that when he trod the boards, the audience fell into his hands. Some scenes without him dragged out too long. The groundlings fidgeted and made rude remarks, and Robin found fault with all the boy players. To the queen: “Look to your hands, mistress! Meat hooks, more like!” Of the shepherd's wife: “A tub of guts in a dress, and a voice like courting cats.” In my ear: “Kit could best them all together, with a meal sack over his head.”
In the middle of the fourth act, while Dorastus paid court to his love (and took too long about it) the groundlings grew restless again. “Behold the beauteous Fawnia,” Robin said to me, “simpering like a milkmaid—”
“Quiet!” I hissed, suddenly most attentive. For my ears had picked up, amongst the rustles and whispers, lines that rang out clear and silver as bell-tones:
But soft within the layered petals keep they curled, These poor sighs of mine by the rose concealed While in thy sweet possession rise to fly unfurled My secret wound enbalmed, my hidden hurts healed …
“What ails thee?” Starling whispered, noticing my violent start.
I shook my head, unable to speak. Those words were set in my brain, chiseled as deep as our Lord's Prayer. My father wrote them to his love. They were on a piece of parchment folded up in a leather wallet, which was stolen from me. My father wrote them. “My secret wound enbalmed, my hidden hurts healed …” My father.
“And mark how Dorastus takes her hand,” groaned Robin. “He eyes her like she was a side of beef in the market.”
The rest of the play was dead to me, though I had to notice when Edward Alleyn stabbed himself in the final scene and expired in a fine crimson gush. The Admiral's Men have developed gory deaths to perfection with their artful use of sheep's bladders and blood. The audience, completely won over, roared their approval when the players assembled on stage for the concluding dance.
“I must know the playmaker,” I said, once the dance was over and the audience thronged toward the open doors.
“Why bother with that?” Robin scoffed. “This piece of barnyard turf is so slight the public will forget it in two weeks. The Company has naught to fear.”
“That matters not. I must know the playmaker.”
“What's this?” Robin's dark, finely shaped eyebrows rose. “Did you hear something? Did he rob us?”
“No, it's not that,” I said, backing away. “Let it be, Rob,” Starling put in, with a searching look at me.
“I'll let it be, but I'm not disposed to linger here among these— dabblers.”
“Go on then,” I said. “Start your way home and I'll take the Bridge if I miss your boat. Go on. I mean it.” I left them staring after me as I vaulted onto the stage and aimed directly for the tiring rooms behind it, ignoring the outraged cries of a stage boy who was kneeling on the boards, scrubbing up sheep's blood.
One can ask nearly anything if it is done with an air of authority, and I went some ways toward my goal before the Admiral's Men caught on to me. To my repeated questioning, one player after another shook his head and declared upon his soul he could not remember the name of the author, even though the work was heralded as a new play. Some thought it was a wit from Oxford, others an unknown hopeful. One swore the playmaker was dead until reminded that he was thinking of Robert Greene. In time I came face to face with Edward Alleyn himself, who had stripped off his kingly robes and sheep's bladder and now was lacing a splendid velvet doublet while a dresser combed out his perfumed hair. “The a
uthor?” He wrinkled his handsome brow. “‘Twas Owen Mercer—was it not, John?” This he addressed to another actor passing nearby, who thought about it for a moment.
“True, Ned—though he wrote the old version. Ben Jonson brushed it up for us last summer, dost recall? Wait, boy.” The actor took a closer look at me. “I've seen you about, haven't I? On the stage? Soft! I have it—”
“Thank you, sirs.” I bowed quickly out of their presence. “I am in your debt. Pardon, sirs. …” I turned then and made a hasty exit, followed by a laugh and an exclamation in Alleyn's rich, rolling voice: “Oho! A spy!”
My brain was in a whirl with this new name to ponder, but all the same, while passing through the door I felt a tug on my memory. I stopped and turned, and studied the rose carved into the upper hatch, wondering why it seemed familiar. Roses are seen everywhere about London, notably in the insignia of the Queen. But what set this rose apart was its stem, a curl in the shape of the letter “C,” bearing three thorns. I knew I had seen it before, under quite different circumstances; then it came to me.
A curious bystander would have been much amazed at what he saw next, for I stood in the entrance to the Rose Theater and solemnly banged my head against the door. The last time I had seen this design, it was stamped upon a leather portfolio clutched in the arm of a supposed law clerk, a man now known to me as John Beecham.
IF THAT WHICH WAS LOST …
took longer than expected getting home, first missing Robin's boat and then stopping at the White Horse Tavern on Cheapside, a gathering place for poets and balladeers. Here I looked for Ben Jonson. I did not find him, but after a few questions I learned where he was staying, and that was some compensation for the trouble I was in when I got home. Masters Condell, Heminges, and Shakespeare all pounced upon me, much annoyed after their long wait for my version of Fawnia and Dorastus. I had intended to ask them if they knew anything of a playmaker named Mercer, but in their current temper this seemed presumptuous. After my report, and a brief discussion, the men determined that the play offered by their rivals was not enough like Shakespeare's to disrupt their schedule. Then the visitors departed and Master Condell laid a part on me to learn for the morrow. As I was also to double as a soldier, he insisted on putting Robin and me through the entire manual of arms in the garden, and by the time we finished it was dark.
I considered slipping out after curfew to continue the search, but decided to be a model apprentice instead: learn my part, obey my betters, and humbly ask for an hour off in the morning. Master Condell regarded me with suspicion when I claimed to have urgent business in the city, but in the end he let me go, “For one hour only. Mind you're back by eleven, or you'll be fined—or worse.” I set off down Shoreditch Road as swift as winged-heeled Mercury.
Lucky for me, Jonson's current lodging was not far from Aldgate, on the northeast end of London, but still it was a long distance to take at a run. I arrived in a sweat, panting, “Where's Master Jonson's room?” The housemaid mutely pointed up the stairs, thinking perhaps that I bore an urgent message for him. When I pounded up the stairs and hammered on the first door, the landlady arrived and demanded loudly what this was about. Despite the shouting, my ears picked up the sound of a man's voice behind the door. Hoping it was an invitation to come in, I lifted the latch and stepped inside a shuttered room, dark and close as a den.
“This,” came a voice from the bed, “had best be a matter of life or death.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “N-not death, but something meaningful to my life, sir.”
“Is it? What's o'clock?”
“About a quarter beyond ten, sir.”
I'll not repeat his next remarks, but once they were out, his temper improved a little. “Open the shutters, boy, and let me see who you are.”
I found the shutters by the slats of light glaring through them, swung them open, and turned back to the figure sprawled fully clothed upon the bed, now leaning upon his elbows and blinking fiercely at me. Ben Jonson had a boisterous reputation, but it appeared that literary pursuits had kept him up late the night before. The table by the window was covered with papers that drifted like snow around the inkpot. Blackened little commas— shavings from his quill pen—were sprinkled about randomly, as if in the heat of inspiration he dared not pause to throw them away.
“I give it up,” he said then, in a voice as gritty as sand. “The face eludes me. State your name and business.”
“My name is Richard, sir, and I apprentice with the Lord Chamberlain's Men. You've seen me—that is, I've seen you—well, what I was wondering … in your time in London have you ever known—or known of—a playmaker named Mercer?”
As I stammered to a pause, he lowered himself until his thick bricklayer's arms were stretched flat upon the mattress and his deep-set eyes fixed upon the timbered ceiling. “Apollo, god of wisdom, lend me patience,” he said. “Half the poets in London could tell you of that scape-grace. Why drag me out of a sound sleep?”
My heart made a leap at this, but whether from joy or dread I knew not. “If you p-please, sir, I … trust your wit and memory. And because … you're right about there being no seacoast in Bohemia. I looked it up in Master Condell's atlas.”
He stared at me, then tossed back his head and let out a great bellow of a laugh, as frightening in its way as a wild animal let from a cage. “Well flattered! I'll strike a bargain with you then, young sir. Fetch me a pint of ale from the Bull, two doors south, and I'll tell you what I know.”
This put a strain upon my allotted time, but it could not be helped—I rushed down the stairs, ducked into the Bull Tavern, and completed my mission before Ben Jonson had fairly got out of bed. Then, after combing his hair and beard and taking a deep draught of the ale and allowing it to settle—during which time I nearly burst with anxiety—he told me what he knew.
Owen Mercer had appeared in London during the summer of the Armada, as near as my informant could recall, though it may have been a little later. He hailed from some northern province: no one knew precisely where, as the man was not consistent about his origins. He had set out to make himself the darling of the London stage, grinding out three or four plays per season, many of which were performed—“But ne'er seen thereafter,” Ben Jonson said, with a snort. Jonson himself arrived in London much later, but his path often crossed Mercer's at the taverns where poets and playmakers were apt to gather.
By then Mercer's star was in decline, and he had stirred up much bad feeling against himself. A clever fellow, he was known for gaining one's confidence and looting one's mind. Fawnia and Dorastus, for example: scarcely had the ink dried upon Robert Greene's book than Mercer had tailored it into a play, never even bothering to change the characters' names. He also earned ill fame as a gambler and racked up debts he could not possibly repay. When Jonson saw him last, it was in a low dive surrounded by worthless companions, claiming that his latest work had attracted the attention of no less a personage than Lord Hurleigh (my ears perked up even more at the mention of this name). Mercer expected the gentleman to shower him with money, whereupon all the unfortunate misunderstandings of the past would be blotted out. In the meantime, perhaps Master Jonson could lend him a few shillings. “Hah,” said Master Jonson, his scorn returning with the memory. “Money may not remain overlong in my purse, but I don't throw it down wells.”
The tale ended sadly. Mercer had made enough enemies in the city to come to a violent end any number of times, but finally crossed swords—literally—with a London gentleman in a private quarrel. It was put about that they were rivals in love, but Jonson suspected that the matter was money. The two met at Finsbury Fields early one morning, but only one walked away. Owen Mercer, gravely wounded, was carried to his poor lodgings and buried the next day in a pauper's grave. All this happened … here Ben Jonson took another gulp of ale and rubbed his forehead trying to remember. 'Twas sometime touching Robert Greene's untimely end, he thought. Not during the plague summer of 1592, for the
theaters were closed all that year, and Mercer's death caused a stir because his latest play had been performed that season. It was about a titled young rogue who dabbled in the theater, lost huge sums of money, and eventually received his just deserts in a duel over a woman. The Fortunes of a Fool was the title my informant remembered, a work remarkable solely for the way it seemed to foretell the author's fate. That was probably some time in 1593, then. A few of Mercer's better plays were still performed, “although they must needs be oiled, to get the screech out of them. Fawnia and Dorastus is a crime against poetry, but I did what I could with it, and only because the Admiral's Men dangled a purse before my eyes.”
“Please, sir,” I asked, after a long pause. “Could you tell me what he looked like?”
“At this distance? 'Twas over four years ago, lad, and I hardly knew him.”
“But … anything at all.”
The man shrugged his heavy shoulders. “A gingery beard. Not a large man, nor a handsome one, for all that the ladies seemed to like him. Good teeth, a fetching smile. Now you must break with me, lad—you hang upon my words as though they were drops of wine. What is your interest in this ne'er-do-well?”
“I … cannot say, sir.” This was strictly true. A line from The Winter's Tale came to me: “I cannot speak, nor think, nor dare to know that which I know.”
For I did know. I knew the four lines of verse were written by a young schoolmaster in Lincolnshire, years before Owen Mercer appeared in London.
“By my guess,” prodded Master Jonson, not ungently, “he was something akin to you?” I said nothing. “Not to fear, lad; thy secret goes no further than these four walls.”
“I am beholden to you, Master Jonson.” The stuffy room seemed to swallow up words. It took effort to speak again. “One thing more. Do you remember who killed him?”
“Easily. The man still lives under that cloud. An attorney, you see. What lawyer would get himself in such a broil? Name of Martin Feather.”
The Playmaker Page 15